


Static

by TheSingerThatYouWanted (orphan_account)



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: 00Q - Freeform, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Kidnapping, M/M, Pre-Slash, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 17:44:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5173355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/TheSingerThatYouWanted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There aren't many ways to communicate with a missing agent, especially when he's armed only with one of the most old-school pieces of tech MI6 have to offer: a radio watch. Then again, sometimes the old ways are the best.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Static

**Author's Note:**

> Over the past two days I have fallen completely headfirst into 00Q hell (I blame Spectre), and this is the result. My first Bond-related story, unbeta-d and written largely at midnight, so if I've made any mistakes let me know and I'll try and edit when I get the chance.

He’d barely moved in three hours, and if he had to he could probably sit still through another two, but it was approaching midnight and the last dregs of the caffeine from his tea were wearing off. It really wasn’t a good time for him to risk falling asleep on the job. He checked the monitors one last time- everything in order, a soft blip sounding every three seconds as Bond’s watch updated them on his location- then stood, feeling the strain leaving his back and a soft buzz, like radio static, building up in his legs. For a moment he considered investing in a pair of compression socks; Q branch had always worked closely with Medical, and while he knew that DVT is uncommon, he’d rather avoid the smug looks of the nurses. They might work closely, but for some reason Q seemed to have a tendency to rub them up the wrong way. He’d begun to suspect it was because of his work with Bond.

As he walked briskly over to the kettle he kept in the corner of the room, Q sighed. He tried to stay professional around the double-O agents, he really did, but God knows it was difficult around 007. His reputation didn’t so much precede him as surround him, an aura of confidence and promiscuity and the insufferable knowledge that he can get away with almost everything making it almost impossible to refuse him. Besides, Q liked him. The gentle teasing, the constant pushing of boundaries, felt almost like friendship; with the ever-present tug of something else, too. Q didn’t want to pin it down, analyse it, for fear of being wrong. Worse, for fear of being right. He’d seen the footage of Silva, watched it unfold before him. As soon as Bond had started transmitting he’d found his way into the island’s own CCTV system, kept watch so he could radio for the helicopters to move in at the right moment- yet for the first time in his life, he’d felt almost voyeuristic. He knew Bond was no stranger to lying, to flirting his way into situations and teasing his way back out, but there had been a hint of truth to that half-smirk as Bond had replied.

_“What makes you think this is my first time?”_

The click of the kettle snapping him from his thoughts, Q shook his head. There was a time and a place for that kind of introspection, and it certainly wasn’t when his only priority should have been getting Bond through the mission. Anything else could, and would, be laid aside for another day.

Without thinking, Q started to count silently. On three, the computer beeped. He smiled. The combination radio and tracking device built into the watch was a little old-school, certainly, but Bond liked old-school. Besides, it went with his suit. As he finished brewing his cup of tea, Q blinked the thoughts of Bond’s suit from his mind and moved to sit down. Five seconds later, the computer began to whine. Concern flashed through his mind, and he barely registered the pain of hot tea splashing onto his hand as he took in the message on the screen in front of him.

_Signal lost. Retry?_

He frowned and pressed the enter key, rebooting the system, only to be confronted with the same message. Without looking, he reached for his radio.

“007? This is Q. We’re having some technical difficulties, please respond if you can hear me.”  
There was no response. Q tried twice more, repeating the message, but still there wasn’t so much as static in response. Flicking through the channels of his radio with one hand, sending lines of code flying across his laptop screen with the other, Q spoke again.

“M, this is Q branch. We’ve lost contact with Bond. When we last spoke he told me he was following the target into the city, hoping to intercept him on the way. That was forty-six minutes ago. His watch puts him at the city centre, but it’s been two minutes since we lost contact.”

“Equipment malfunction?” came the response. Q sighed, tension gathering across his shoulders as he worked faster.

“With respect, sir, this equipment does not simply malfunction. The only thing that could disrupt it would be brute force, and even then simply dropping or standing on it wouldn’t have an impact.”

“Then what would?”

Q swallowed.

“A bullet. Perhaps a knife, if the angle was right. Whichever reason it is, I believe Bond is in danger.”

“007 is always in danger. He’ll be in touch, one way or another.”

“Sir-”

“While I appreciate your dedication, Q, we have neither the time nor the resources to waste on retrieving an agent who may not even need rescuing. He’s been doing this job for a long time now. He can handle himself.”

Q drew a breath which seemed heavy in his throat, then nodded.

“As you wish, sir. I’ll contact you with any further updates.”

“Only wake me for the important ones. I have a meeting to get to in the morning, one which will decide on how much funding you receive next year, so you might want to stay on my good side.”

There was a pause.

“Understood, sir.”

“Bastard,” he added under his breath, once he was certain M had terminated the link. Mallory wasn’t as bad as some of the other people he’d worked with, but being head of MI6 came with a certain level of bureaucracy, and with bureaucracy came an undeniable snobbishness. The agency viewed its employees the same way it did its bullets- too expensive and too easily expendable.

Over the next hour or so, Q tried every variation in the coding he could think of that might get him past some kind of signal jammer. The other minions left scuttling about in Q branch had been sent into another room to monitor every security feed they could worm their way into, looking for evidence of where Bond might have been taken or who his attackers were. It was becoming increasingly clear, however, that this was going to be more difficult than usual. CCTV networks were thin on the ground, and Q was certain now that whatever was stopping Bond from contacting them wasn’t electronic. Back to brute force, then. Bullet or stab wound? Q didn’t really want to consider which was worse.

Two hours and twenty-four minutes after they lost contact, Q was running out of ideas. The room was silent save the reassuring background hum of the lights, the only thing keeping him grounded. Two minutes later, he nearly fell out of his chair. Static issued sharply from the radio, harsh and crackling, one long burst. A second later there was another, then a shorter squawk and one more long burst. After he’d recovered from the shock of hearing something, Q spoke urgently into the radio.

“Bond? 007, are you receiving?”

No answer, but the static started up again. The same sequence, twice long, once short, then once more long. On the third repeat a spark of understanding dawned, settling like a heavy weight in his chest. Long-long-short-long. Dash-dash-dot-dash.

“Q.”

The letter was repeated five times in total, roughly evenly spaced. Q found himself able to imagine all too clearly what must be happening, somewhere he could never even contemplate travelling, hours away by plane. Something had gone wrong- the target had noticed, or simply got paranoid, or been tipped off- and Bond had been captured, his watch damaged. Something hard and bitter rose in Q’s throat as he thought of the agent, sitting in some dark cell in a foreign country, blindly transmitting off a broken radio with no way of knowing if he was getting through. As the final dash faded out, there was a long silence. After about a minute the transmission started up again, a different one this time. The name of a building. Again it was repeated five times over, but now Q understood immediately. He sent a message to M telling him what had happened, demanding that a rescue team be sent in, before turning to his computer. A quick search of the company revealed it to be little more than a façade, owned by a known colleague of the man they were trying to catch. A little more digging revealed they had recently closed some offices twenty minutes’ drive from where he’d lost Bond’s signal.

“There you are,” he whispered, wincing at the tremor in his voice. He’d never been good at lying, or at keeping his emotions in check, but he understood computers, understood what they could be made to do and understood better than anyone how to stop them. Still, he often wondered how he’d got the Quartermaster’s job. What use was a spy who could only tell the truth, and who had an embarrassing tendency to cry when he couldn’t protect someone? His sole qualification was his technical ability, and- he chided himself softly for his lapse in concentration- right now it was his technical ability that would allow him to protect Bond. He couldn’t afford to lose sight of that. Fingers moving in a blur, he began to file flight plans and locate the agents nearest to Bond, sending the resulting lists to M.

His phone pinged with M’s reply, but he was interrupted in reading it by the static beginning to crackle again. Q scribbled the letters down on a piece of paper as he received them. Seven letters in, he wished he hadn’t.

This message was sent only once, more something to keep worried hands busy than a genuine cry for help. Short and anything but sweet, it read simply: “Torture every hour. Please hurry.”

It was three hours and fourteen minutes since they’d lost contact, meaning Bond had been imprisoned for two hours and fifty-four minutes, assuming they wouldn’t torture him on the car journey. That meant he had six minutes until the next round. Helpless, powerless to do anything, Q gave M’s response- that they were mobilising a recovery team from the neighbouring country, and would be at Bond’s location inside forty minutes- little more than a cursory glance. Forty minutes wasn’t good enough. There was no guarantee Bond had more than five.

Eight minutes later the broadcasts started, and the pain in Q’s chest and the burning in his throat matched the agony undoubtedly being inflicted on Bond. Over and over again, a hissing rhythm, the same four notes. The same letter.

Q. Q. _Q._

“I can hear you, James,” he muttered, past the hard mass in his throat, past the embarrassing, frightened tears that he refused to let spill from his eyes. “We’re coming. Just wait a little longer.”

The static shuddered and spat to the beat of ragged breaths a thousand miles away, and Q looked away from the radio at last, bringing up a satellite feed of Bond’s approximate coordinates. The abandoned office complex squatted in a corner of his screen, hulking and ugly, a blemish on the landscape to match the rotten dealings it camouflaged. Q’s fingers itched to do something, to send in a bomb or collapse the building in on itself, but there was nothing he could do and besides, there was still an agent trapped inside. With immense effort he breathed out slowly and an air of detached professionalism settled lightly over his features, stilling his hands and smoothing the tremor in his voice as he answered M’s incoming radio message even as the pain in his chest threatened to swallow him whole.

“I’ve got satellites on the building,” he said crisply in response to M’s request for information. “Bond is alive, though that could change at any moment judging by some of his messages. Tell your men to hurry, will you? I could do with getting that watch back.”

Q knew gallows humour never worked on the hangman, but to his relief M didn’t question him. They exchanged mission details, sharp and to the point, and then M was gone and once again there was silence in Q branch. Bond’s transmissions had stopped. Q didn’t want to think about the significance of that.

He watched the rescue unfold on the screens twenty minutes later, the soldiers efficient and ruthless in the way only government service can make people, and held his breath as Bond was carried to a helicopter. It wasn’t long before he received a message from one of the agents in there, telling him that Bond was wounded but stable, but he still couldn’t stop the panic filling his lungs. A few minutes later another message came through, the static somehow less grating than before, and finally Q let out a shaky sigh of relief. Morse code, still, through that ridiculously outdated watch.

“Thank you, Q.”

Biting his lip, Q accessed the helicopter’s comms helmets, selecting the one he knew didn’t belong to either the pilot or the agent he’d spoken with earlier. He was almost certain it belonged to Bond. His reply was sent labouriously in bursts of static, and despite the connection only running one way from his laptop he could almost hear Bond’s dry chuckle.

“But of course, James. I want my watch back.”

**Author's Note:**

> I own none of these characters, or anything to do with James Bond. Comments/feedback always greatly appreciated!


End file.
